Yesterday I received the smartest bit of fund-raising in the mail: An invitation to commit to a yearly gift of $25 to my alma mater, in recognition of which pledge the Trustees will contribute $500 to the school.
What could be simpler? What could be more indicative of my gratitude that a place existed where I could be exposed to genuine inquiry and concern, where I would form lifelong friendships?
Why not do it for this blog? Tonal Refraction is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, an arts services organization; contributions to Fractured Atlas designated for Tonal Refraction are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law. If you have ever found yourself thinking twice about one of these posts I invite you to go to tonalrefraction.com and match your response to my commitment to music, to learning, to my audience, you.
Tuesday, March 18, 2014
Martha Graham Illuminates the Ups and Downs
Actually Martha Graham illuminated the agonizing tension between forward and back, analogous in many ways to the musical rise and fall. She had a characteristic gesture of the arms and face yearning to move forward while the solar plexus pulled in the opposite direction, making a graphic body image of the soul torn between outward and inward movement.
I think of this often, as one needs to know absolutely nothing about dance or movement or the body to grasp the power of the gesture.
The 19th century seemed to recognize only one direction, up. Onward and upward was the battle cry. Progress! Valhalla! Arrival! Manifest Destiny!
Have we recovered yet?
I think of this often, as one needs to know absolutely nothing about dance or movement or the body to grasp the power of the gesture.
The 19th century seemed to recognize only one direction, up. Onward and upward was the battle cry. Progress! Valhalla! Arrival! Manifest Destiny!
Have we recovered yet?
Monday, March 17, 2014
The Piano in Your Own Room
Imagine having the piano entirely to yourself, for no ears but your own. Imagine cultivating your own feelings about its magical sound and the incredible music composed for it without always the fictional audience or critic listening from outside, most likely criticizing.
Everything would be different.
One of the best things that ever happened in my family was when a wonderful wise friend gave us his old Steinway upright. It went straight into my daughter's room where she played with it completely on her own for years, developing a sense of its sound that is unlike anything I have ever heard. Now that she is going public with that artistry it is like being let in on a secret - a beautifully worked out secret.
Get your piano out of a public space and into your child's room, or your room. It will change your life.
Everything would be different.
One of the best things that ever happened in my family was when a wonderful wise friend gave us his old Steinway upright. It went straight into my daughter's room where she played with it completely on her own for years, developing a sense of its sound that is unlike anything I have ever heard. Now that she is going public with that artistry it is like being let in on a secret - a beautifully worked out secret.
Get your piano out of a public space and into your child's room, or your room. It will change your life.
Sunday, March 16, 2014
How Come Amateurs Can be More Exciting Than Professionals?
This is an increasingly urgent question as I observe more and more amateurs falling for the trap that confuses sounding polished with being impassioned. As long as the going professional standard is to sound polished no matter what, amateurs will find it harder and harder to give their unconscious musical selves permission to show much less flourish.
The trend has been growing steadily more pronounced. It was already evident when I began coaching amateur chamber musicians in 1975. It has most definitely become more problematic.
The essential question in chamber music always has to be "Why does it take three (or however many) people to play this piece?" As long as three people are trying to sound as though they represent some fictional single point of view the question has no meaning, nor does the music.
In the case of solo playing it is a matter of the amateur having the courage to address the music inward rather than to what Emily Dickinson called "an admiring bog." Being let in on the innermost musical instincts of anyone is for me the highest possible privilege, no matter how skilled or unskilled the player.
The trend has been growing steadily more pronounced. It was already evident when I began coaching amateur chamber musicians in 1975. It has most definitely become more problematic.
The essential question in chamber music always has to be "Why does it take three (or however many) people to play this piece?" As long as three people are trying to sound as though they represent some fictional single point of view the question has no meaning, nor does the music.
In the case of solo playing it is a matter of the amateur having the courage to address the music inward rather than to what Emily Dickinson called "an admiring bog." Being let in on the innermost musical instincts of anyone is for me the highest possible privilege, no matter how skilled or unskilled the player.
Saturday, March 15, 2014
If Sight-Reading, Why Not Ear-Reading?
The discussion rages on an Internet group how best to teach sight-reading. Most of the techniques touted as effective are all visual aids, only rarely does anyone mention the need to attach any of the alphabet or number devices to actual sounds.
Today I was describing to a colleague how difficult it was for me to learn to listen without looking at a score for as soon as I look at a score I know what I should hear, rather than having any awareness of what I am actually hearing -- there is a big difference. If I analyze in advance what the student should be playing I deprive the student of my attempt to understand what he or she does in fact hear, so I am stuck with a categorical right note/wrong note approach, rather than with the far more interesting "Ah! I hear how you understand this passage and can now show you what alternatives the composer has suggested."
It was not easy to learn to listen this way but the rewards have been great both for myself and for my students, both in piano and in chamber music.
I went to this trouble in order to demonstrate the validity of Viktor Zuckerkandl's insights into the innate logic of the musical mind and of the unfailing bodily sense of following that logic even into the realm of the conventional wrong note.*
Without that kind of listening I would never have noticed that some tonal works are conceived so as to distort the reliable tuning to the tonic triad or even to the instrument's innate resonance (like the violin's A or the cello's G). When I have heard that happen it has been stunning to identify the event and then be unable to discern it by visually studying the score - so overpoweringly inhibiting is the conceptual world represented by standard music notation.
*Sound and Symbol: Music and the External World, published by Bollingen Press, 1956
Today I was describing to a colleague how difficult it was for me to learn to listen without looking at a score for as soon as I look at a score I know what I should hear, rather than having any awareness of what I am actually hearing -- there is a big difference. If I analyze in advance what the student should be playing I deprive the student of my attempt to understand what he or she does in fact hear, so I am stuck with a categorical right note/wrong note approach, rather than with the far more interesting "Ah! I hear how you understand this passage and can now show you what alternatives the composer has suggested."
It was not easy to learn to listen this way but the rewards have been great both for myself and for my students, both in piano and in chamber music.
I went to this trouble in order to demonstrate the validity of Viktor Zuckerkandl's insights into the innate logic of the musical mind and of the unfailing bodily sense of following that logic even into the realm of the conventional wrong note.*
Without that kind of listening I would never have noticed that some tonal works are conceived so as to distort the reliable tuning to the tonic triad or even to the instrument's innate resonance (like the violin's A or the cello's G). When I have heard that happen it has been stunning to identify the event and then be unable to discern it by visually studying the score - so overpoweringly inhibiting is the conceptual world represented by standard music notation.
*Sound and Symbol: Music and the External World, published by Bollingen Press, 1956
Friday, March 14, 2014
The Body and the Ear
For many years I have been testing Viktor Zuckerkandl's insight that musical logic brings about certain subconscious responses that indicate a kind of innate common sense. Today, once again, I had ample and convincing proof that he was right.
It is a young woman, currently living without a piano, with no particular musical "talent," but whose ear is astute as it usually is in people for whom results do not come easily. I have invented an exercise in which the student plays the same note an octave apart with the two hands, pedal down. Then, at random, without changing the pedal, the student plays two other white key pitches, returns to the first pitch, and continues in this manner.
It was fascinating to observe the number of instances in which she gravitated to consonant intervals -- she has a pronounced preference for what she calls "right notes." I know this is no accident because I observe it in others, including myself. I used to be able to do this exercise myself but can no longer. It is as if an involuntary measurer takes over and I go to octaves and fifths whether I "want" to or not.
It is a young woman, currently living without a piano, with no particular musical "talent," but whose ear is astute as it usually is in people for whom results do not come easily. I have invented an exercise in which the student plays the same note an octave apart with the two hands, pedal down. Then, at random, without changing the pedal, the student plays two other white key pitches, returns to the first pitch, and continues in this manner.
It was fascinating to observe the number of instances in which she gravitated to consonant intervals -- she has a pronounced preference for what she calls "right notes." I know this is no accident because I observe it in others, including myself. I used to be able to do this exercise myself but can no longer. It is as if an involuntary measurer takes over and I go to octaves and fifths whether I "want" to or not.
Thursday, March 13, 2014
Does It Go Up or Does It Go Down?
This is one of the most obvious things in notated music: It's a piece of cake; you can see it right away. So what difference can it possibly make?
Well, the ear seems to care a great deal about the difference between rising and falling. So much so that for many years falling meant sadness and rising meant joy. Then comes a tune like Joy to the World, which goes in altogether the wrong direction. But that's Handel--announcing this great good news by turning acoustical logic upside down.
(Actually another example, far less meaningful, but still: London Bridge is Falling --- should be up! This was one of the examples from a wonderful children's book popular about 50 years ago called The Silly Book.)
When we hear a single tone without accompanying chord it is fairer to expect it to rise than to fall. We take the tone to be a fundamental, especially if it is centrally placed within the vocal range, G for example. This is why the opening G of Mozart's G Minor Piano Quartet is so deeply unsettling: It goes down to D rather than up, thus establishing D as a more secure tone. Did Mozart know this? How could he not? The theme is identical to that of the early G major, actually minor piano and violin sonata except that in that piece the D is a 5th above not a 4th below the G.
Just because we know where the proper sounds are located on our instruments doesn't mean we have processed them in terms of their resonance within tonal space.
Well, the ear seems to care a great deal about the difference between rising and falling. So much so that for many years falling meant sadness and rising meant joy. Then comes a tune like Joy to the World, which goes in altogether the wrong direction. But that's Handel--announcing this great good news by turning acoustical logic upside down.
(Actually another example, far less meaningful, but still: London Bridge is Falling --- should be up! This was one of the examples from a wonderful children's book popular about 50 years ago called The Silly Book.)
When we hear a single tone without accompanying chord it is fairer to expect it to rise than to fall. We take the tone to be a fundamental, especially if it is centrally placed within the vocal range, G for example. This is why the opening G of Mozart's G Minor Piano Quartet is so deeply unsettling: It goes down to D rather than up, thus establishing D as a more secure tone. Did Mozart know this? How could he not? The theme is identical to that of the early G major, actually minor piano and violin sonata except that in that piece the D is a 5th above not a 4th below the G.
Just because we know where the proper sounds are located on our instruments doesn't mean we have processed them in terms of their resonance within tonal space.
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